THE BEST FOOT FOREMOST.
The arrows of the snowy wind came shooting over Shotover. It was
Saturday now of that same week with which we began on Tuesday. The
mercury during those four days had not risen once above 28° of
Fahrenheit, and now it stood about 22°, and lower than that in the
river meadows. Trusty and resolute Dobbin never had a harder job than
now. Some parts of Headington Hill give pretty smart collar-work in
the best of times; and now with deep snow scarred by hoofs, and ridged
by wheels, but not worn down, hard it seemed for a horse, however
sagacious, to judge what to do. Dobbin had seen snow ere now, and gone
through a good deal of it. But that was before the snow had fallen so
thickly on his own mane and tail, and even his wise eyebrows. That was
in the golden days, when youth and quick impatience moved him, and the
biggest flint before his wheel was crushed, with a snort at the
road-surveyor.
But now he was come to a different state of body, and therefore of
spirit too. At his time of life it would not do to be extravagant of
strength; it was not comely to kick up the heels; neither was it wise
to cherish indignation at the whip. So now on the homeward road, with
a heavy Christmas-laden cart to drag, this fine old horse took good
care of himself, and having only a choice of evils, chose the least
that he could find.
Alas, the smallest that he could find were great and very heavy ills.
Scarcely any man stops to think of the many weary cares that weigh
upon the back of an honest horse. Men are eloquent on the trouble that
sits behind the horseman; but the silent horse may bear all that, and
the troublesome man in the saddle to boot, without any poet to pity
him. Dobbin knew all this, but was too much of a horse to dwell on it.
He kept his tongue well under bit, and his eyes in sagacious blinkers,
and sturdily up the hill he stepped, while Cripps, his master, trudged
beside him.
Every "talented" man must think, whenever he walks beside a horse, of
the superior talents of the horse--the bounty of nature in four curved
legs, the pleasure there must be in timing them, the pride of the hard
and goutless feet, the glory of the mane (to which the human beard is
no more than seaweed in a billow), the power of blowing (which no man
has in a comely and decorous form); and last, not least, the final
blessing of terminating usefully in a tail. Zacchary Cripps was a man
of five talents, and traded with them wisely; but often as he walked
beside his horse, and smelled his superiority, he became quite humble,
and wiped his head, and put his whip back in the cart again. The
horse, on the other hand, looked up to Zacchary with soft faith and
love. He knew that his master could not be expected quite to
understand the ways a horse is bound to have of getting on in
harness--the hundreds of things that must needs be done--and done in
proper order, too--the duty of going always like a piece of the finest
music, with chains, and shafts, and buckles, and hard leather to be
harmonized, and the load which men are not born to drag, until they
make it for themselves. Dobbin felt the difference, but he never
grumbled as men do.
He made the best of the situation; and it was a hard one. The hill was
strong against the collar; and, by reason of the snow, zigzag and the
corkscrew tactics could not be resorted to. At all of these he was a
dab, by dint of steep experience; but now the long hill must be
breasted, and both shoulders set to it. The ruts were as slippery as
glass, and did not altogether fit the wheels he had behind him; and in
spite of the spikes which the blacksmith gave him, the snow balled on
his hairy feet. So he stopped, and shook himself, and panted with
large resolutions; and Cripps from his capacious pockets fetched the
two oak wedges, and pushed one under either wheel; while Esther, who
was coming home at last, jumped from her seat, to help the load, and
patted Dobbin's kind nose, and said a word or two to cheer him.
"The best harse as ever looked through a bridle," Zacchary declared
across his mane; "but he must be hoomered with his own way now, same
as the rest on us, when us grows old. Etty, my dear, no call for you
to come down and catch chilblains."
"Zak, I am going to push behind. I am not big enough to do much good.
But I would rather be alongside of you, through this here bend of the
road, I would."
For now the dusk was gathering in, as they toiled up the lonesome and
snowy road where it overhung the "Gipsy's Grave."
"This here bend be as good as any other," said Cripps, though himself
afraid of it. "What ails you, girl? What hath ailed you, ever since
out of Oxford town you come? Is it a jail thou be coming home to?
Oxford turns the head of thee!"
"Now, Zak, you know better than that. I would liefer be at Beckley any
day. But I have been that frightened since I passed this road on
Tuesday night that scarce a morsel could I eat or drink, and never
sleep for dreaming."
"Frightened, child? Lord, bless my heart! you make me creep by talking
so. There, wait till we be in our own lane--can't spare the time now
to speak of it."
"Oh, but, Zak, if you please, you must. I have had it on my mind so
long. And I kept it for you, till we got to the place, that you might
go and see to it."
"Etty, now, this is childish stuff; no time to hearken to any such
tell-up. Enough to do, the Lord knows there be, without no foolish
stories."
"It is not a foolish story, Zak. It is what I saw with my own eyes. We
are close to the place; it was in a dark hollow, just below the road
on here. I will show you; and then I will stand by the cart, while you
go and seek into it."
"I wun't leave the haigh road for any one, I tell 'ee. All these goods
is committed to my charge, and my dooty is to stick to them. A likely
thing as I'd leave the cart to be robbed in that there sort of way.
Ah, ha! they'd soon find out, I reckon, what Zacchary Cripps is made
of."
"Ah, we all know how brave you are, dear Zak. And perhaps you wouldn't
like to leave me, brother?"
"No, no; of course not. How could I do it? All by yourself, and the
weather getting dark. Hup! Hup! Dobbin, there. Best foot foremost
kills the hill."
But Esther was even more strongly set to tell the story and relieve
her mind, than Zacchary was to relieve his mind by turning a deaf ear
to all of it. Nevertheless, she might have failed, if it had not been
for a lucky chance. Dobbin, after a very fine rush, and spirited
bodily tug at the shafts, was suddenly forced to pull up and pant, and
spread his legs, to keep where he was, until his wind should come back
again. And he stopped with the off-wheel of the cart within a few
yards of the gap in the hedge, where Esther began her search that
night. She knew the place at a glance, although in the snow it looked
so different; and she ran to the gap, and peeped as if she expected to
see it all again.
In all the beauty of fair earth, few things are more beautiful than
snow on clustering ivy-leaves. Wednesday's fall had been shaken off;
for even in the coldest weather, jealous winds and evaporation soon
clear foliage of snow. But a little powdery shed of flakes had come at
noon that very day, like the flitting of a fairy; and every delicate
star shone crisply in its cupped or pillowed rest. The girl was afraid
to shake a leaf, because she had her best bonnet on; therefore she
drew back, and called the reluctant Zacchary to gaze.
"Nort but a sight of snow," said he; "it hath almost filled old quarry
up. Harse have rested, and so have we. Shan't be home by candlelight.
Wugg then! Dobbin--wugg then! wilt 'a?"
"Stop, brother, stop! Don't be in such a hurry. Something I must tell
you now, that I have been feared to tell anybody else. It was so
dreadfully terrible! Do you see anything in the snow down there?"
"As I am a sinner, there be something moving. Jump up into the cart,
girl. I shall never get round with my things to-night."
"There is something there, Zak, that will never move again. There is
the dead body of a woman there!"
"No romantics! No romantics!" the Carrier answered as he turned away;
but his cheeks beneath a week's growth of beard turned as white as the
snow in the buckthorn. No living man might scare him--but a woman, and
a dead one----
"Come, Zak," cried Esther, having seen much worse than she was likely
now to see, "you cannot be afraid of 'romantics,' Zak. Come here, and
I will show thee."
Driven by shame and curiosity, the valiant Cripps came back to her,
and even allowed himself to be led a little way through the gap into
the deep untrodden and drifted snow. She took him as far as a corner,
whence the nook of the quarry was visible; and there with trembling
fingers pointed to a vast billow of pure white, piled by the driving
east wind over the grave, as she thought, of the murdered one.
"Enough," he said, having heard her tale, and becoming at once a man
again in the face of something real; "my dear, what a fright thou must
have had! How couldst thou have kept it all this time? I would not
tell thee our news at home, for fear of tarrifying thee in the cold.
Hath no one to Oxford told thee?"
"Told me what? Oh, Zak, dear Zak, I am so frightened, I can hardly
stand."
"Then run, girl, run! We must go home, fast as ever we can, for
constable."
He took her to the cart, and reckless of Dobbin's indignation, lashed
him up the hill, and made him trot the whole length of Beckley lane,
then threw a sack over his loins and left his Christmas parcels in the
frost and snow, while he hurried to Squire Oglander.